


Michelangelo is to Blame

by vindobonensis



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: All the tropes oh God all the tropes, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), E is for chapter 5 the rest is fluff, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Praise Kink, SO MUCH FLUFF, Wing Grooming, Wing Kink, packed into one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-14 12:34:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vindobonensis/pseuds/vindobonensis
Summary: One drunken night Aziraphale asks a question that could change everything. A visit to an art gallery does.---Am I cramming literally all the fandom tropes into this fic? You betcha!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy!

Almost three months after Armage-no-you-don’t, their lives had settled into a comfortable routine.

The ducks in St. James’ were delighted to see them practically every day, walking the winding paths along their ponds - and leaving a trail of delectable bread crumbs. The staff at the _Ritz_, the _Savoy_ and an illustrious assortment of other high-class dining establishments across London by now knew the odd couple on sight. In several places, the waiters had devised a lottery system to decide who would get to serve them on any one occasion and reap the - always considerable - tip. Crowley’s houseplants, much to the demon’s chagrin, were growing ever less-terrified due to Aziraphale’s now frequent presence in his flat and the kind words the angel whispered to them when he thought his friend wasn’t looking. To put it bluntly, Crowley and Aziraphale now rarely spent a moment apart.

This particular evening - a rainy Thursday in early autumn - had seen the ethereal pair lingering over a scrumptious five-course dinner and several bottles of Châteauneuf du Pape at _The Dorchester_ before they had retreated to their sanctuary in the backroom at Aziraphale’s bookshop. Currently, Crowley lay sprawled across a well-worn antique settee, talking animatedly with a glass of port in his hand, while Aziraphale was leaning back in his preferred leather armchair, silently nursing a tumbler of brandy. Both were well on the inebriated side of tipsy.

"An’ anyways, angel, you should’a seen them when it tilted. _Hilarious. _Few stones in the foundations rearranged and _bam _there goes the whole bloody tower. 'Course - I couldn’ have known that it would become so pop’lar, but hey - mass tourism is its own form of evil, eh?" the demon rambled drunkenly, the heady port slushing around its container precariously. Crowley stopped to take a sip and flung one of his legs across the settee’s armrest. "Did I ever tell you about that time in Loch Ness, when -"

"Crowley." Aziraphale’s voice cut across his friend’s tale, sounding uncharacteristically serious.

The demon paused and pulled himself a little more upright. Looking over at the angel in the armchair, he saw him staring fixedly at his glass, face pinched and wan. Whatever this was about, it wasn’t good.

"Can I ask you something - something personal?" Aziraphale asked, his voice constricted with uncertainty.

A sinking feeling in his stomach, Crowley nodded mutely. How long the angel by his side had been caught up in his own thoughts he could not tell, but it must have been a while. And whatever he needed to know had obviously been weighing heavily on his mind. "Go ahead then," Crowley mumbled, trying to sound as sober as possible.

Aziraphale’s eyes flickered up to meet his for only a second before returning to the amber liquid in his glass, but it was long enough for Crowley to see the deep worry in his friend’s expression.

"When you -back when - I mean," the angel began uncertainly before sighing and apparently bracing himself. "When you fell. Did it - did it hurt?"

Blood rushed in Crowley’s ears and the world was drowned in static. He stared numbly at Aziraphale.

"I mean yes - silly of me - it must have hurt," the angel registered his friend’s stunned silence and prattled on, slightly panicked. "I mean - could you maybe tell me just how much - or in which ways it -"

"Angel." This time it was Crowley who cut across his friend’s ramblings. He had recovered from the shock of the question.

Abruptly, Aziraphale fell silent, eyes still locked onto his glass.

"Why are you asking me this?" Crowley probed softly_. _"I mean, it’s been 6000 years and we’ve never talked about _that_."

Sitting still as if carved out of stone, the angel remained silent.

Crowley stared intently at him, regretting painfully that he had discarded his sunglasses in the midst of their revelry soon after they had arrived at the bookshop. He felt exposed without them. When the angel did not answer, he admitted, unable to keep the hurt out of his voice: "I didn’t think it was important. That it mattered to you that I fell."

That elicited a response. "Oh Crowley, dear. No you mustn’t think that!" Aziraphale exclaimed and finally looked at the demon opposite him. His expression was one of torment."It doesn’t matter to me that you fell. At least it hasn’t for a very long time. I’ve come to - to very much appreciate you just as you are, dear. But -" he broke off, looking away again, seemingly unable to bring himself to say what needed to be said.

"But what?" Crowley prompted gently, somewhat reassured that this was not about him being what he was.

Aziraphale was looking anywhere but him, his hands clenching around the glass he was still holding. "It’s only that yesterday as I was tidying the fiction shelves, I found -" he continued haltingly.

"You found what, angel?"

"A feather," Aziraphale admitted softly, giving a tiny shrug. "One of mine, I mean. It must have fallen out without me noticing. It - it’s probably nothing. Just an ordinary molt. I’m being silly, I know. It’s just that after everything that’s happened, after all that I’ve done, I can’t help thinking that I might -"

A beat of silence passed, then Crowley understood. "You’re afraid you might be falling," he breathed, stunned by the implications.

Nodding jerkily, Aziraphale looked back up at his friend and tried to give him a smile. It came out a twisted and sad thing. "Yes, I know it’s silly. Just an overreaction. Don’t mind me, please, dear," the angel said hurriedly. Apparently, he had decided that he had gone too far and was trying to back-paddle as gracefully as possible. "You were saying about the Loch Ness -"

Normally, Crowley would have been happy to race away from the topic faster than he could push his Bentley on a deserted motorway. But he knew Aziraphale - had known him since the beginning of time itself. And he knew that the angel would never broach a topic that caused him such pain if he weren’t scared beyond belief. And if there was one thing that overrode Crowley’s urge to keep his painful memories of the fall and what had been before as tightly locked away as possible, it was his instinct to help Aziraphale - to keep the angel happy, sheltered, unafraid.

"They break your wings."

"- to do with that monster myth, did you d-" Aziraphale broke off mid-sentence and stared at his friend.

Crowley looked back and tried to convey his earnestness in gaze and his voice. "Before you are cast out. They break your wings. The fall itself - it burns." Crowley continued, brutally wrenching every word out of his mouth and pushing down the shame and anger he felt at the look of horror and pity that grew on Aziraphale’s face with every syllable that passed his lips. "I helped shape suns and nebulas, angel, held them in my hands, but their heat is nothing compared to the infernal flames that tear through you when you fall. It burns away everything that is holy or good. The connection that you feel to heaven, to _Her_, is uprooted and torn from your chest. And afterwards you are left feeling desolate and empty and utterly forsaken, in a boiling pit of sulfur."

Breathing in sharply, Crowley finally tore his eyes away from his friend and looked back at the half-empty glass of port he was still holding. The pleasant haze of inebriation he had maintained all evening had all but faded away. Well, always time to rectify that. "Cheers!" he muttered and raised his glass at Aziraphale with a pained grin before downing its contents in one long swallow.

Silence stretched between them, long and hollow. Finally, Crowley looked back at his friend and found him staring straight ahead with red-rimmed eyes. "Look," he began as gently as he possibly could. "I don’t think it’s _silly _of you to worry about falling, not after everything that’s happened. But I also think that you don’t have anything to worry about unless they come for you personally. And losing a feather, especially if you don’t feel any other pain, should be fine."

Aziraphale nodded jerkily, obviously trying his best to believe his friends’ words and not burst into tears at what he had just heard. Inclining his head slightly, he gave him a watery smile. He hesitated, then asked: "Do you - do you remember what it was like? Heaven, I mean." So many lines had been crossed, so many of their barriers broken down already, that the angel apparently found himself unable to keep the question in.

Crowley stared back mutely, face blank, eyes far away.

—

The heavenly host was everything. Light and love and incredible warmth surrounded them at all times - security and acceptance and faith as easy as breathing. Utter certainty that what he was doing was right, was _good._

He could still feel his staff in his hand, heavy wood like a ghost imprint on his palm, could still recall the softness of ethereal clouds under his bare feet. There was still a place in his chest where wonder and excitement had once lodged at the sight of constellations of stars and planets spilling forth from his being, formed with nothing but imagination and his own angelic power.

_A giver. A creator. A healer. _

Sometimes the champagne that crossed his lips at the Ritz almost tasted like the bubbling happiness that had once glowed in his chest at the sight of the very first creatures on this newly created planet, Earth, so special, so different from all the rest.

And the humans, oh the _humans_. Made in Her image, practically divine. Their mission to watch over them, to love them more than God herself.

_His mission to heal their hurts, to sooth them._

Through all their _trials_.

But _why_ did there have to be trials?

Why _test_ them?

Why cause them _pain_?

Why create them only to _torment_ them?

_"Why do they have to suffer?"_

—

"Nah," Crowley lied after a heartbeat’s pause. Aziraphale did not have to know, he decided, not when knowing could only hurt the angel further. Not when more questions would follow about what he had done, who he had been, if he had _known -_

Gesturing airily with his free hand, the demon snapped his fingers. "Gone. _Poof. _Soon as I fell," he added, trying to muster up his usual debonair demeanour of easy cockiness and failing rather miserably. He reached for the still half-full bottle of port and filled his glass to the brim before knocking it back.

Aziraphale sat silently and looked at his friend, sensing the air of finality that hung about the demon. No further word would be spoken about this tonight.

—

_ _


	2. Chapter 2

London’s autumn air was crisp the afternoon that Crowley and Aziraphale strolled through the city towards the National Gallery. It had been almost four weeks since that evening in the bookshop and, much to their mutual relief, the tension that had lingered between them for days afterwards had dispersed. With a metaphorical sigh of contentment they had fallen back into their routine.

The evening before had seen them at the Royal Albert Hall, basking in the glory of a particularly spirited rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture by the London Symphony Orchestra. This particular morning, it was Renaissance Art that drew them in - a special exhibition on Michelangelo, in fact.

Having lived through all of human history, art galleries basically provided strolls down memory lane to both angel and demon - especially since both of them had had a tendency to orbit around whoever was considered a great artist of the day. Both Heaven and Hell had received a rich host of reports detailing the successful perpetuation of angelic and demonic influence respectively through revered and wildly popular masterpieces.

—

When Aziraphale had read the advertisement for the exhibition in the_ London Times _two weeks before, he had been so excited he had actually _wiggled _in his chair. "Oh Crowley dear, look!" he had exclaimed in delight, beckoning the demon over and almost spilling some of his morning tea. "Look, at the National Gallery - some of Michelangelo’s sketches! New ones. Well, newly re-discovered ones."

Leaning over the back of the angel’s chair, Crowley had seen the ad gushing about a special exhibition showing some sketches of the painter’s that had been found in archives in Rome and authenticated mere months before. They had not been seen for hundreds of years and had never been on display for the public. Artfully designed, the ad featured a layered-over glimpse of one of the drawings, showing the tastefully exposed torso of a young man. Faint memory stirring, Crowley thought of warm nights, heady wine, the smell of paint and soft summer morning light filtering through the dirty windows of an artist’s workshop. "Sure angel, let’s go if you want to."

—

In the present moment, the two had stopped in front of the palace-like gallery building, Aziraphale rolling on the balls of his feet in gleeful anticipation. "Oh this looks very promising," he said happily, looking at the heavy _special exhibition_ banner hung across the entrance. Another sketch half-revealed. Glancing up at the banner and seeing the partial view of a drawing of wings sprouting from a muscular figure’s back, Crowley thought for a moment of the young man he had met so long ago - curly brown hair, laughing eyes and paint-encrusted fingers. "After you, angel, after you."

—

"Oh look, dear - this must be Tommasio!" Aziraphale whispered to Crowley, who was walking through the exhibition by his side.

The angel had stopped in front of a small sketch of a young man reclining luxuriously on a bench that might have been carved from marvel, muscles rippling under his bronze skin. His face was turned towards the viewer and a coy smile stretched his broad lips into an almost-smirk.

"Oh yes - that is Tommasio alright," the demon snorted in amusement, recalling the painter’s young lover and his devilish sense of humour. His favourite form of riling up his partner had been to constantly _tease _him while modelling for him. Not that Michelangelo had entirely disapproved, the old dog.

"You knew them a lot longer than I did, didn’t you, dear?" Aziraphale asked wistfully, giving the demon by his side a small smile.

Said demon grinned back. "Ah yes, Rome, the early 16th century. What a time. And _really_ \- the guy painting the Sistine Chapel? Couldn’t resist. Got there a few weeks after he did."

Crowley watched in amusement as Aziraphale’s nose crinkled just the tiniest bit in disapproval - an old reflex, he knew. When the angel spoke, though, he tried to keep his voice carefully neutral. "Yes I did hear that it was your fault that some aspects of the murals and the frescos in the Vatican turned out a little more … _naughty _than the Pope thought appropriate."

Only barely suppressing a bark of laughter, Crowley shrugged. "Angel, trust me there wasn’t much _tempting _to do with old Mike here. His designs were plenty _naughty _enough on their own - the buff naked angels and decided lack of women? That was all him. And anyways - they did send some poor second-rate sod in there with a paintbrush to cover them all up later on."

"I’m afraid they did," grumbled Aziraphale, obviously torn between disapproval of the display of naked angels on the brink of indulging in carnal pleasures in one of the holiest spots on earth and the disapproval of a later, unskilled hand ruining what were undoubtedly masterpieces of Renaissance art.

"You didn’t get there until 1509, right?" Crowley asked, thinking back to the years he had happily spent tempting Romans by night and lounging around artists’ studios by day, trying his best to convince them to incorporate temptation into their work.

"July 1509, yes. Awfully hot summer, that. Positively stifling." Aziraphale huffed a bit, but Crowley recognised the underlying fondness in the angel’s tone. Renaissance Italy had not been the worst place to be.

Now that they were talking about it, he could recall the night they had met again after what had been a mutual absence of 80 years. He had been in a tavern near the Vatican with Michelangelo, three cups deep already and celebrating the nearing completion of the work of the painter. The man had spent all day lying on a scaffold staring up at his work in the Sistine Chapel and, quote, _was glad that he’d only have to be on his back for pleasure soon enough now. _Aziraphale’s sudden appearance had been unexpected but had elicited a joyous shout from the already slightly tipsy demon. He’d introduced the angel to the artist and the three of them had talked for a bit before the Michelangelo had absconded to the back of the bar with a young man who, as Crowley had heard in the morning, had been a _great artist _in his own right. Aziraphale and Crowley had spent the rest of the night just catching up with each other’s doings.

"The stuffed wine leaves in that little taverna were quite scrumptious," Aziraphale said wistfully, apparently reliving the exact same memory as his friend. "And I suppose you’re right about Michelangelo - I did read the sonnets he wrote to Tommasio later on. I have a lovely first edition of them in my shop. He was quite _naughty _enough in his own right."

Crowley snorted in amusement at hearing Aziraphale use that word twice in one day and drifted off towards the next room of the museum.

At the sight of the sketches in this part of the exhibition he was, quite suddenly, filled with a sense of dread.

—

"Would you sit for me one day?"

"Pffft. Me? Keep dreaming Mikey."

"Dream indeed. Don’t flatter yourself. But there are a few concepts that I have in mind that require someone of your physique. You have encouraged me to pursue the more … daunting subjects of my work - you might as well assist me in the endeavour."

"_Daunting_ you say, hmm? A little bit _risqué_? Pass me the Chianti and I might be persuaded."

—

Aziraphale rounded the corner and let his eyes roam around the room. "Oh this is exquisite!" he murmured happily to himself, taking in the drawings and their subjects before turning towards the introductory text on the wall by the side of the doorway. _Michelangelo’s Angels and Demons._

Stepping slowly along the wall, Aziraphale admired the drawings of celestial and infernal begins that were hung with all due reverence in gilded frames under bright spotlights, occasionally humming to himself in delight.

Michelangelo’s talent truly had been one of a kind. He had seen the young man at work only once - the day after he had met him and Crowley at the little taverna near the capitol. It hadn’t been a pure coincidence, him walking into the restaurant that evening. He _had _been looking for his demonic … well _acquaintance_ at the time. (Though they had already been hovering on the cusp of friendship for quite a while - at least in his books.) He had arrived in Rome that day, dispatched there by the head office to perform several blessings in a convent in the suburbs. And he had felt Crowley’s presence before he’d even passed the city limits.

Finding him in the company of one of the finest artists of the day had not exactly been a surprise, given both of their tendencies to gravitate towards Bohemians. It had certainly been pleasurable talking to the young maestro - to hear his views on every aspect of painting and sculpture from shading and the choice of material to how he imagined the scenes that he was planning to work on the following morning. Until, of course, Crowley had nudged the artist’s attention towards a young man hovering at the bar close to them. At the time, Aziraphale had felt obliged to feign ruffled annoyance at the demon’s unsubtle temptation. But once Michelangelo had drifted away into the shadows with his newly acquired paramour, angel and demon had spent a lovely night together talking about the adventures they had had during their time apart. And when Michelangelo had reemerged in the early hours of the morn, he had invited both of them back to his workshop.

Aziraphale slowed his steps to a stop in front of one particularly well-done sketch of a demon facing away from the viewer. Executed in dark chalk on pale grey paper, the black wings bursting forth from the masterfully shaded back of the man looked almost realistic. Tilting his head and looking closely at the image, Aziraphale let his mind wander for a moment and imagined Crowley’s wings flaring behind him as they had on the wall of the eastern gate that day in Eden. It was odd, Aziraphale thought, looking more closely at the man in the drawing - he did look a little bit like Crowley from behind! The same slim, wiry stature. Even the same shoulder-length hair that the demon had sported in the Renaissance period.

Well - Crowley _had _spent quite a while around the painter, Aziraphale supposed. From the way that the demon had flung himself into an armchair and slung his long legs over the armrest that morning at Michelangelo’s studio, it had certainly looked like he was accustomed to being there. A bright smile flashed across Aziraphale’s face at the thought that his friend had been the inspiration for some of these sketches.

As he moved along this side of the exhibition, he fancied he could discern some of Crowley’s features in the subject of almost every one of the drawings. The sharpness of his jawbone, the distinctive curve of his nose, the shape of his calves. Many of the sketches were done in terracotta chalk on yellowing parchment and every lock of flaming hair reminded Aziraphale of the dishevelled cut that he had first admired that evening in the taverna. Crowley had always had a certain _flair._

Crowley. Come to think of it, where had he gotten to?

Stopping short two thirds of the way along the wall, Aziraphale turned to look around. It took a moment before he spotted his demonic companion on the opposite side of the room, standing still in front of a sketch.

Preternaturally still, in fact.

Aziraphale frowned. Even from where he was standing, he could see the tension that tore at his friend’s gait, the stiffness with which he stood rooted to the spot.

What in heaven’s name?

Puzzled and slightly worried, Aziraphale crossed the room, approaching Crowley carefully. After a few steps, he could see past the demon and his eyes fell on the drawing that the other was staring at so fixedly.

As Aziraphale drew closer, he saw that it was a fellow angel depicted in the sketch. Unlike so many other of Michelangelo’s subjects, this celestial being was not naked, but clothed in a long pale tunic. He was also not twisting away from the viewer to showcase the artist’s skill in shading, but standing easily upright, facing slightly to the left to showcase a striking profile framed in auburn hair.

Aziraphale’s heart gave a heavy thump in his chest. A very familiar striking profile framed in very familiar auburn hair.

_Crowley._

Another step toward the drawing and closer to his friend left Aziraphale without doubt that this, indeed, was the demon, depicted in the form of an angel by the great Renaissance artist. But this likeness brought no smile to his face. Instead, a horrible sinking feeling was tearing at his stomach and somewhere at the back of his mind he could sense _something _stirring. Something long forgotten. Something that by rights shouldn’t even have been there.

Unable to tear his eyes away from the drawing, he stared at the staff the angel - _Crowley _\- was holding in this depiction. Tall and elegant, wood carved in intricate designs. Held lazily, almost carelessly, but with so much tenderness. The slim fingers that wrapped around the dark wood were graceful, almost fragile, made not for fighting but for creating. _For healing._

A sharp pain stabbed into the back of Aziraphale’s skull and an almost unbearable sadness surged through his chest without warning. Still, he could not look away from the drawing.

Six wings framed the figure's body and a dark red halo shimmered around his head.

Red.

_Why is it red?_

_You would have to ask Her that, angel. I suppose it does suit my hair. But I don’t suppose colour-coordination factored into Her decision._

"Raphael!" Aziraphale exclaimed. Knowledge tore through him and the word passed his lip before he could stop himself. He recognised the archangel depicted in the drawing, recognised that _that_ was who Michelangelo had wanted Crowley to represent. So why did it feel so much bigger than that? Why did the thought feel so monumental? Why did the name on his lips sound less like an exclamation of _Eureka _and more like a _summons?_

Crowley flinched violently and spun around to face Aziraphale.

His eyes were wide with shock and wonder, and something almost like fear.

Aziraphale stared at him, uncomprehending, then gasped when he saw a thin line of black demonic blood begin to trickle from his friend’s mouth. A moment later, the demon doubled over in pain.

"No!" the angel cried and rushed forwards, to catch his friend, hastily waving a miracling hand for the other visitors to leave them alone. Crumpling in Aziraphale’s arms, face taut with pain and smeared with black blood, Crowley raised his sunglassed eyes to the angel’s.

"Don’t," he gasped, voice thin with pain and another emotion the angel could not place. "Don’t call me that."

With that, he slumped forwards, unconscious, and Aziraphale finally _understood._

_—_


	3. Chapter 3

They appeared in the comfortable backroom of Aziraphale’s bookshop with a muffled _pop._

Crowley, still unconscious, lay limp in his angel’s arms and Aziraphale’s heart beat a panicked rhythm against his ribs at the sight of the demon’s head lolling back lifelessly, the black blood still trickling from his slightly parted lips. In all their time together, the angel had never once seen his friend this defenceless and vulnerable - not even when he had pulled him from the morass of a drinking den in northern Spain, half discorporated with alcohol poisoning, during the Spanish Inquisition. It was jarring to see the demon like that.

_To see an Archangel like that._

Shaking his head against the intrusive thought that his brain so helpfully had decided to throw at him, he strode over to the settee which had borne a constant Crowley-shaped indent for several months now. Gently, he placed the unconscious from of his friend onto the soft padding, trying his best to shift him into a halfway comfortable position.

With a sigh, Aziraphale drew back, kneeling down onto the carpeted floor to really _look _at his friend. Pale and lanky, Crowley looked like always, and if it hadn’t been for the blood on his face, he could have been taking one of his quasi-reptilian naps_._ After a moment of hesitation, he gently withdrew the demon’s omnipresent sunglasses and carefully wiped away the blood smeared across his face with a soft towel he miracled up almost unconsciously.

_Demon blood. In an Archangel’s veins._

Aziraphale flinched at the thought that flashed across his mind unbidden. Ancient revulsion welled through him at the sight of the black now staining the towel’s white fabric. He barely remembered the Fall itself . The agony of losing so many of his brethren, linked as they had been through invisible bonds, had almost completely blinded out the memory. But he _did_ remember what had come after - Heaven’s forceful teaching on the evil of the newly created hosts of hell, of their virulent hatred and malice, of their deceitfulness and viciousness. _Abominations all of them. Wicked. Unnatural. Wrong._

Breathing deeply, Aziraphale tried to force down the echo of Gabriel’s voice in his head. It had taken him centuries - _millennia! - _to overcome heaven’s doctrine and tentatively allow his friendship with Crowley to form. And even then he’d been unable to banish some deep-seated doubts and fears.

It had been a long time now that he’d been truly bothered by his what his friend was. For centuries his most deep-seated fear had not been Crowley’s demonic nature but what would happen to both of them if their respective head offices found out about their association. Their _arrangement. _But apparently the revelations of the afternoon had stirred up old memories and prejudices.

_But it did not matter_, Aziraphale told himself firmly, looking back at Crowley’s expressionless features. What mattered was that they were together, that they were on their own side. An angel and a demon against both Heaven and Hell. _And it did not matter who he had been before the Fall._

A soft groan tore Aziraphale from his thoughts.

Crowley was stirring. His brows were drawn together in discomfort, the corners of his mouth pulled down into an unhappy grimace. A moment later, his eyes opened and Aziraphale could have cheered for gladness at the sight of the familiar yellow pupils.

"Crowley!" he exclaimed in relief.

Residual tiredness and confusion still fogged the demon’s features and for a moment his eyes roamed around the room sluggishly. "Aziraphale - what the hell happened?" he asked groggily, finally looking at his friend. But no sooner had the words crossed his lips than horror dawned on his face. Aziraphale could almost see the memory of what had transpired at the gallery come back to his friend.

Panic clenched inside the angel’s chest and for a few heartbeats, he was utterly uncertain how to proceed. Then, he rallied himself and cleared his throat. "I was being awfully foolish, my dear. I said something without thinking how it would impact you and I’m afraid you suffered the consequences. I am truly sorry and I’ll avoid doing anything of the kind in the future."Trying to muster an acceptable approximation of an apologetic smile, Aziraphale looked at Crowley intently, trying to convey just how sorry he was and that _really my dear there is no need to talk about this if you don’t want to we can just forget this ever -_

"Nah, angel. That was on me, really," the demon sighed, pulling himself into a somewhat upright position with a groan. Everything about his posture sang of residual pain. Slumping forward and resting his elbows on his knees, Crowley ran his hands across his face, sighing. Aziraphale looked worriedly at his friend, still kneeling on the floor.

Avoiding Aziraphale’s eyes, Crowley turned and stared out the window of the shop’s back room instead. It opened onto a slightly bedraggled-looking courtyard with a lone beech tree. Dusk had fallen by now, and in the twilight the autumnally colourful leaves of the tree were fading to grey. The demon remained silent for a long few moments.

"I thought you were talking to me when you weren’t," he said eventually.

Guilt gnawed at Aziraphale’s stomach. "I - yes. It was the drawing, dear. I had just realised what it was supposed to show. _Who_ it was supposed to show, I mean. I didn’t mean to hurt you - please, you must believe that."

"Don’t worry, angel," Crowley said and Aziraphale was relieved to hear the kindness in his voice. "It wasn’t anything you did, really. But when I turned - when I _reacted _to _that _name, I suppose it counted as _claiming _it. And _that _is something that demon’s can’t do without consequences."

Aziraphale looked stricken. "I’m so sorry, Crowley." Losing a name meant losing your identity as an angel, losing _yourself. _Crowley had told him about the Fall some weeks before, but even with the demon’s gruelling account, he had not fully grasped that being cast out truly meant being reduced to _nothing._

His friend offered him a wry smile in return. "Ah, never mind. I came to terms with it a long time ago. And I wouldn’t want to go back."

Aziraphale stared at the demon as his words echoed around his head, sounding hollow. Then, the angel’s mouth moved without his permission. "But you - you were an _archangel!"_he exclaimed with a fair measure of distress. A second later, he clamped a hand over his own mouth, utterly mortified.

Crowley looked at his friend and to Aziraphale’s dizzying relief, his gaze was neither offended nor shocked. Instead, there seemed to be resignation and even a faint hint of amusement at the angel’s stricken expression.

"Yeah," he agreed, voice mellow. "But you see - I never fit in there, Aziraphale. Not really. And falling wasn’t … _pleasant_, but - I feel much more like _me _like this than I did when I had _pffft _" he waved his hands around his back vaguely "- six wings, twenty heads and thousands of eyes, ya know."

Without his permission, Aziraphale’s eyes followed Crowley’s hands as they gestured towards the empty air behind him and there must have been something in his expression - some sort of morbid curiosity - that was too obvious for the demon to miss. In the inclination of his head and the faint amusement in his eyes, the angel saw his friend’s unspoken permission to ask another question.

"Do you still - your wings, I mean,"he asked carefully, trying not to let on how jittery he felt.

"What?" the demon asked and yes, that was _definitely _amusement in his voice now. Apparently, Crowley enjoyed seeing Aziraphale flustered even during a conversation like this.

Feeling the unpleasant heat that he’d come to learn to associate with _a blush _spreading up his neck and across his face, Aziraphale clarified: "You used to have six."

"Yes," Crowley confirmed pleasantly, looking at his friend, eyes gleaming with expectation.They might have been talking about some of the most traumatic moments of his existence, but somehow he had gained the upper hand of the conversation again.

Blowing out a shaky breath, Aziraphale’s face grew hotter and yet he pressed on: "In the Garden that day - I - I’ve only ever seen you with two."Again, he looked at the space behind Crowley, willing his friend to stop being purposefully obtuse. No matter how curious he was, Aziraphale knew that he could never bring himself to ask straight out _do you still have the other four?_

With a crack, a gust of wind swept through the room out of nowhere and Aziraphale was almost blown backwards onto the floor. It was as if every single molecule of gas had been compressed and then exploded outward. Every particle of dust covering the ancient bookshelves and their tomes had been deplaced and was now swirling madly through the air in the dim light of the room. The smell of smoke and sulfur hung heavy in the air and the stench of something horribly, terribly _burnt._

Behind Crowley, three pitch-black pairs of wings had unfurled.

Aziraphale was frozen, staring without regard for the pain his curiosity must be causing his friend. Kneeling on the floor, he suddenly felt that his prostrate position was nothing short of just. He was looking at an _archangel, _albeit a fallen one.

One pair of Crowley’s wings - the one he had seen all those long millennia ago on the wall of the garden of Eden - was sleek, shiny and well-groomed. The other two were in such a state of disrepair that nausea clawed its way up the back of Aziraphale’s throat just looking at them. Matted, clogged with dirt and grime and _soot_ they looked - and _smelled -_ like they had just been dragged through a gutter and then thrown into a furnace. Which, Aziraphale realised with a pang of horror - was probably exactly what had happened to them. His eyes roamed the black expanses of burnt feathers and then fixed themselves onto one particular spot on the left bottom-most wing, where a joint was sticking out at an odd angle. Tears shot to Aziraphale’s eyes and he remembered something Crowley had said weeks before -

_They break your wings._

"Ah yes - sorry about that. They’re a bit of a mess."

Crowley’s wistful voice tore the dumbstruck angel out of his miserable contemplation. The demon wasn’t looking at him. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the bookshop window. Darkness had fallen outside by now and with a start Aziraphale realised that his friend was looking not outside but at his own reflection in the window-glass.

"Haven’t really looked at them since, well…"Crowley continued, then broke off.

_Since he fell. _Aziraphale’s mind supplied painfully and his breath shuddered in his chest as he looked at the wreck of Crowley’s other two pairs of wings. To carry around all that destruction and ruin for _millennia _\- tucked away on another plane of existence, yes, but still a part of him - it must have _hurt. _Perhaps only the phantom echo of ethereal pain, but _still. _And then to manifest it for the first time in aeons, just because Aziraphale had _asked …._

"I could - umm I could help you with that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand there we go. :) 
> 
> It's the first time I'm posting in ages so I'm extremely grateful for any feedback. A.k.a - comments keep me happy ;)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your comments! :) Here's the next chapter.

"I could - umm I could help you with that." Apparently, Aziraphale’s mouth had spontaneously developed a _habit_ of working faster than his brain .

Crowley’s head snapped around and he stared at the angel, uncomprehending.

"The state of your wings, I mean," Aziraphale added quickly, annoyed at how unsteady his voice sounded. "I could - you know - I mean if you don’t want me to, my dear, I fully understand of course, I just thought I’d -" Mercifully, the angel’s embarrassed rambling was interrupted at this point.

Aziraphale watched in trepidation as Crowley looked away from him and rose from his seat on the settee. He strode across the room towards the door and the angel’s heart gave a deafening _thud _at the thought of the demon walking out on him and leaving him here because he’d finally gone too far.

Instead, Crowley reached for an old chair Aziraphale used to get to books higher up on his shelves. Gently pulling it towards him, the demon spun it around and sat, straddling the chair. With a sigh, he folded his forearms across the top of the backrest and lowered his forehead onto them, concealing his face. All six of his wings were now fully exposed to Aziraphale. Giving unspoken _permission._

For several heartbeats, the angel could do nothing but stare. Then, he swallowed thickly and roused himself, finally rising from his crouched position on the floor. Trying to reign in his own nervousness and awe, he stepped carefully across the room towards his friend.

_Steady now. _He admonished himself. The last thing Crowley needed in his vulnerable position was Aziraphale misstepping and blundering for the umpteenth time that night.

He stopped, standing only inches away from the mighty expanse of the raven-black wings. From this distance, the devastation the Fall had wreaked on them was more excruciatingly visible than ever, especially beside Crowley’s sleek black main pair of wings that he’d seen before. Eyes flitting across the feathers in such starkly contrasting states of grooming, Aziraphale felt nausea claw at his insides. No matter how often he had considered it rationally, especially after Crowley’s account mere weeks before, he had never fully realised that the black of Crowley’s wings was the result of flames tearing through his plumage, not natural coloration. Now, as he stood up close, the biting stench of smoke and sulfur assailed his senses when he tried to take a steadying breath.

But his resolution was set.

With a wave of his hand, the bookshop window swung itself open and a miracled-up breeze of crisp twilight wind swept through the room, dispelling the worst of the vapours hanging in the air. Outside, it had begun to drizzle softly and the pitter-patter of raindrops on the courtyard cobblestones calmed Aziraphale’s nerves. It had been a while - _millennia _to be exact - since he had last groomed another angel’s wings, but he supposed it was "like riding a bicycle", as the human expression went.

Gingerly, he reached for the matted, soot-encrusted primary coverts of Crowley’s topmost right wing. Before he could overthink the matter - _Did the conventions of demon-grooming differ from those amongst angels ? _\- Aziraphale buried his fingers wrist-deep in the feathers. He threaded through the tangle of black with little resistance, despite the clumps of soot and sulfur that crumbled against his skin.

A deep moan broke forth from Crowley’s lips and Aziraphale stilled, afraid for a moment that he had hurt his friend. After a heartbeat’s pause, however, he continued, deciding that the noise his friend had made had been more akin to relief than pain.

Growing more sure of his own actions, he ran his fingers through the mess of Crowley’s wing, top to bottom, trying to comb through the chaos, straightening the feathers that were still viable, rooting out the dead ones, and dislodging the worst of the dirt. Within minutes, Aziraphale’s own hands were the colour of ashes and a pile of crumbled feathers and filth had amassed on the floor of the bookshop’s backroom.

Underneath his hands, Aziraphale felt Crowley grow slack. The tension that had kept his friend clinging rigidly onto the chair’s backrest bled out of the demon and soon he seemed to be holding onto the wood more to keep himself upright. An entirely inappropriate glow of satisfaction ignited unbidden in the angel’s chest when he realised that Crowley was basically melting under his touch.

For a while, he continued his work in a silence only occasionally broken by a soft demonic sigh of content, moving from the right to the left of the topmost pair of wings, then to the bottom pair. 

"Angel?"

Crowley’s voice, rough and low, interrupted Aziraphale’s movements just as the angel was starting on the bottom left wing.

"Yes, my dear?" he inquired softly, not wanting to break the comfort of the moment.

"Got any booze?"

To Aziraphale’s credit, he managed to temper the chuckle that had threatened to burst forth at his friend’s question to nothing more than an amused huff.

"Of course," he replied and beckoned a bottle and glass from the well-stocked liquor cabinet in the corner of the room to float towards them.

Finally raising his forehead from where it had rested on his arms, Crowley elected to ignore the glass entirely, grabbing a hold of the neck of the bottle ofChateau de la Canorgue instead. Pulling the cork out with his teeth, he took a few long gulps and gave another satisfied sigh before letting his head sink back down.

Taking this as permission to continue, Aziraphale buried his hands in his friend’s feathers once more. When his fingers ran across the joint he had noticed before, between the radial and metacarpal bones, that had so clearly been mangled by a break healed wrong, he brutally suppressed his own shiver of horror. Even without extending his angelic awareness to a different plane, he could feel the echo of agony. Briefly, he wondered if he could try to heal Crowley, but if the demon’s own powers couldn’t do it… best to not linger too long. He continued, steadily threading through the feathers, feeling Crowley shift occasionally to drink more wine.

A few minutes later, Aziraphale finished combing his fingers through the last wing. With a thought, he miracled away the detritus that had accumulated on his carpeted floor. Momentarily, the door swung softly open and a large bowl full of warm water, soap and a washcloth levitated into the room and set themselves down next to the angel.

Carefully, Aziraphale dipped the washcloth into the water and the soap and then raised it to the topmost pair of wings. When the warm cloth touched his alula, another deep moan broke forth from Crowley’s lips and he shifted backwards in the chair minutely, pressing his wings against the angel’s caressing hands. His wings quivered under the angel’s touch.

At his friend’s motions, Aziraphale sucked in a sharp breath. Grooming was an intimate gesture among angels, yes, but there was intimate and then there was _intimate. _And the angel had never, ever elicited a reaction like this from a fellow angel. His eyes flitted to Crowley’s face and he saw that the demon had thrown his head backwards, a blissed-out expression on his features.

"Just like that, angel" he murmured in a low voice before raising the wine to his lips once more and emptying what was left in the bottle in a few long draughts. As he let his head slump forwards again and the hand holding the bottle fall to his side, Aziraphale saw that it had already refilled itself. Promptly, he realised that he had not exactly been paying attention to how much his friend had been drinking and decided to attribute the demon’s rather, well, _forward _movements to an advanced state of intoxication.

Shaking his own head to clear his thoughts - which had decidedly wandered in a direction he felt uncomfortable with - Aziraphale once more concentrated on the task at hand. Systematically, he moved the wet cloth across the demon’s wings, soaking his feathers in water that miraculously remained both warm and clean, steadfastly ignoring his friend’s ever more frequent sighs of pleasure.

Incrementally, the powdery soot and grime vanished, leaving behind clean raven feathers, and the angel could not help but marvel at their beauty - at the awe-inspiring presence of an archangel’s six wings, even if they had been blackened by the Fall.Huffing in self-annoyance, Aziraphale shook his head and reminded himself that this was Crowley, not Raphael, and that it truly didn’t matter who he had used to be.

When he set the washcloth aside at last, the black expanse of Crowley’s wings was stretched out before him, clean and untarnished for the first time in millennia. But Aziraphale knew that there was one step still missing and he steadied himself before moving again, reminding himself firmly that whatever reaction the demon underneath his hands would show to his actions was not really _him_, uninhibited as he was by inebriation.

With a last calming breath, he reached between Crowley’s shoulderblades to where his wings sprung forth from his back. He traced his fingertips carefully along the edge of where pale skin morphed into raven feathers until they brushed across two little nubs - _glands! _\- hidden beneath downy soft plumage. The demon’s reaction was instantaneous.

With a loud moan that truly couldn’t have been mistaken for anything but pleasure, Crowley bucked almost clean off the chair, pressing back and upward into Aziraphale’s hands. The angel kept the fingers of one hand steady as they probed at the little nubs - his other hand came to rest on Crowley’s shoulder and guided his friend gently but firmly back down onto the chair. Still, the demon continued to rock slightly, rubbing his back against Aziraphale’s ministrations. A second later, the angel felt a viscous liquid begin to flow between his fingertips. _Wing oil._

Trying his best to ignore Crowley’s satisfied moan, the angel lathered his hands in the oil and began to spread it evenly across the demon’s wings. The matted feathers absorbed it eagerly and instantly began to regain strength and volume, shining sleekly in the dim light of the bookshop’s backroom. As he worked, Aziraphale also felt his friend’s motions as Crowley raised the bottle of wine to drain it for the God-knew-how-manieth time. The angel furrowed his brows in trepidation.He didn’t mind his friend being drunk - Heaven knew this room had seen the both of them sloshed good and proper an embarrassing amount of times. Just - with Crowley being in such a vulnerable position already, the fact that only one of them was intoxicated seemed to skew the balance even further. Aziraphale knew that, sooner or later, he would have to ask his friend to sober up before he did anything that he would be embarrassed about later.

"Angel?" Crowley hummed happily. By now, he was leaning forwards again, head resting on the arms he had folded across the chair’s backrest once more.

"Yes, my dear boy?" Maintaining an even pace, Aziraphale continued to systematically spread the oil across every inch of the demon’s feathers.

"I didn’ mean to fall."

Despite his best intentions, Aziraphale’s fingers froze for a moment before he forced them to continue their raking motion. He really shouldn’t let Crowley talk about this in his state.

"I know, my dear - don’t you worry about it -"

"_No, Aziraphale._"Crowley interrupted his friend’s platitudes with drunken insistence. "I didn’t _mean _to."

Shifting at this uncomfortable turn of events and debating briefly with himself if he should ask his friend to miracle the wine out of his system, Aziraphale continued his movements. Eventually, a selfish curiosity won out.

"What happened?" he asked, fully aware that he really, really shouldn’t.

Underneath his fingers, the demon’s chest expanded in a sigh

"All I asked," Crowley responded, a definite slur to his voice, "is why they needed to _suffer_."

Silence descended onto the room once more. Crowley apparently fell back into the haze of pleasure that alcohol and Aziraphale’s hands brought him. The angel, though, was struggling hard to keep gently massaging the revitalising oil into the feathers before him, rather than bursting into a blazing fire of righteous fury. And Heaven knew it was a struggle - even now he rememebered all the times that he had stood beside Crowley throughout the centuries, watching the suffering of the humans during plagues and wars and disasters. More often than not, he himself had wondered too: _Why?_

He thought of Crowley, black-out drunk and despairing in a Spanish tavern after he had seen the Inquisition, or standing beside him while Jesus was being nailed to the cross, or staring disbelievingly at the crowds that had assembled to watch the building of the Ark. _Not the kids?! You can’t kill kids! _Fury boiled in Aziraphale’s gut and it took every ounce of willpower to keep his hands from shaking and betraying his inner turmoil.

"We met once, ’n heaven," Crowley slurred. Despite the gravity of his words, there was a pleased hum in the demon’s voice and he sighed softly when Aziraphale ran his fingertips across his oil glands to gather more of the liquid. "Y’askd me why my halo was red."

At this reminder of the memory that had come flooding back to him at the National Gallery, Aziraphale felt his heart rate pick up. That meeting, aeons ago, had been with an Archangel, far above him and so much more ancient. At the time, he had been utterly awestruck and, in typical Aziraphale fashion, he’d clumsily blurted out the first thing on his mind. Raphael’s response had been neither unkind nor annoyed, but his attention had slipped away from him almost instantly. _You would have to ask Her that, angel._It hurt, in retrospective, to have the word Crowley used so freely as a term of endearment directed at him by the same voice without any semblance of affection - as a stark reminder of their differing status. 

"Yes, dear, I remember," Aziraphale said mildly, trying hard to keep his voice even.

"'M s’rprised y’can," the demon slurred. "Y’know, I still can’t regret it. Fallin’ I mean - There are things that I miss’n’all. Building galaxies, angel. God there’s nothin' like it,"Crowley rambled on, apparently too drunk to notice who he was invoking in his speech. "But everything that’s down here. It’s just. It’s fantastic. And I don’ just mean the big things. The little things. The - the blueberry scones at that bakery you like over on the Strand, the music, the_ wine_. That bistrot in Marseille at the corner from that, that church - must’ve been the 17th century we had dinner there - those little - what were those _thingies"_

_"_1664, my dear, and those were escargots with garlic butter," Aziraphale supplied, his heart clenching at his friend’s earnestness.

"Yes, _those. _See, if I’d stayed an archangel, I’d never have gotten the scones, the music, the garlic butter or _you_." Crowley, apparently, was too blissed out to notice what he was saying. "Getting you was the besssst thing."

Aziraphale’s heart was now trying its best to claw its way out of his chest. At a loss for what else to do, the angel remained silent and stared at his fingers, carding through the feathers of Crowley’s wings and covering them in oil.

"S’why I didn’t go to Alpha Centauri. After the bookshop burned. No point without you," the demon carried on drunkenly. "I’m ssssso glad you’re still here, love."

At this, Aziraphale jerked back. This had gone too far. He had _let_ it go a great deal too far. Taking a few steps backwards, he barely registered the magnificence of Crowley’s restored wings. Instead, he focussed on choosing his words and his tone carefully.

"Crowley, I think it would be best if you sobered up now. Please."

The demon in the chair before him had stiffened the second the angel’s caress had been withdrawn so abruptly. Now he remained rigid for another few seconds before pulling himself shakily into a standing position. His wings trailed across the floor as he turned to face his angel.

When Crowley’s yellow eyes, fogged over with intoxication, met his, Aziraphale could see the regret in them. Then, the demon snapped his eyes shut, concentrated for a moment, and shuddered as the alcohol drained out of his system.

A second later, yellow eyes stared back at Aziraphale, now clear and sober. At the look in them, a searing pain shot through the angel's chest.

"Going too fast for you again, angel?" Crowley asked wryly, a pained grimace of a smile on his face.

At this, Aziraphale stepped forward, closer to Crowley, until he was well into his personal space. The last time they had stood this close had been at the conference center in the days before the apocalypse. Gently, theangel placed a hand on the demon’s chest and watched with amusement and satisfaction as the other’s eyes widened dramatically. Their faces were mere inches apart.

"No, dear," Aziraphale said firmly. "Not nearly fast enough, in fact. I just wanted to make sure you would remember this."

— 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed. As always - I'd love to hear what you think!


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